Friday, September 21, 2012

Astrology, Magic and Self-Knowledge

You can get something to happen by having a clear plan of
what you’re trying to achieve, and going out and doing it. That is Mars, with a
bit of Saturn-shaping. It is generally how the world works.

But you can also use magic. This is the outer planets. With
magic, it is not about a sharply defined subject (you) imposing its will on a
sharply defined object (the world.)

It involves a more subtle understanding of how the world
works, in which subject and object are one. The word magic comes from the ancient Greek magos “one of the members of the learned and priestly
class”, which in turn comes from the old Persian magush, possibly
meaning “to be able, to have power.”

That last one sounds about right – to
be able, to have power. I don’t know about it having much to do with priests
and scholars, though: they are good for performing other people’s rituals and
preserving other people’s words, but I don’t think of them generally as having
much power of their own.

So magic means you can get things done,
but on a basis of inner power. Which isn’t something you can acquire, nor is it
something you’d claim to have, or even a word you’d use. That is a crude,
worldly, exoteric way of thinking. No, it comes from having the right
relationship to yourself, self-knowledge, being at ease with who you are. It
gets called ‘esoteric’, like some hidden yogic mystery that you have to go to
Tibet to acquire, or to a Toltec Master. But that’s because over the centuries
we’ve had it knocked out of our culture, first by Christianity, and latterly by
the modern establishment religion, science.

Establishments find it easier to
function if people look to them for guidance rather than to themselves. They
will often insist on it. I suspect it’s always been that way, at least to some
extent. I expect it.

So it’s about having the right
relationship to yourself, and to the world. You can’t separate the two. And
then you get things to happen not by pushing events, but by creating space for
them. This is particularly Neptune’s realm. You mentally, emotionally,
intuitively align yourself with the event you want to unfold, you keep yourself
aligned, and you wait for it to happen, or for the opportunity to present
itself.

Awareness is vital here. You can’t just
magic anything into being. It’s no good
wanting 2 plus 2 to equal 5, for example. And you can’t easily go against a
strong natural force, like rabbits eating your lawn. But you might get the
clouds to rain! And if you just ‘want’ something, well it won’t have much power
unless it is something – or someone! – you really need, that makes intuitive
sense as well.

And you don’t know the precise nature
of the outcome, because it’s not like pushing billiard balls around a table. If
anything, it’s about being the pocket and waiting for the balls to drop in, in
the trust that it will be the right ones. But you probably don’t know which the
right ones are.

It’s plugging into a wider wisdom that
seems to know what’s right for us. We don’t know what’s right, not precisely, and not
beyond a limited degree.

But we can take steps, the future needs
constant dreaming into being. That full alignment of ourselves is central. And
with that we can do ceremonies, rituals. We can create them ourselves,like I did in my Neptune ritual, which bore fast and powerful results. And it was
based around a myth involving Neptune and Odysseus. And I didn’t know what I
wanted, just that I needed to move forward.

I don’t entirely like the word magic,
because we are dealing with a natural, albeit often unrecognised, means of
action. And magic has connotations of Will in the narrow sense. People often
use the word ‘manifest’ these days, which relates, but it is clichéd and often wrong-headed.

I think the word that probably comes
closest to what I’m talking about is prayer! Yes, praying to whatever you
conceive of as ultimate. I suspect the Catholic saints work quite well. Not so
sure about the Christian god, he’s so twisted, but even then it probably works
to some extent. I think I prefer the natural world in its entirety. It’s
tangible, it’s there, it’s real. It’s not some being you’re not quite sure
about, or a cosmic idea. What is there apart from the natural world? It is
everything, so why not pray to that? We are part of it, we are intimately
connected to it. Unlike god, whose good books we have to keep in.

So praying as directing your intention
out there into the natural world. But with integrity, with the sense that you
are fully aligned with what you are doing. And it doesn’t have to be just for
yourself. It can be for others, help for others. We can use magic there as well.
Of course, we can’t know what’s best for others – we don’t even know what’s
best for ourselves – but sometimes it’s obvious, like health, or life, or
something they really want.

It’s that inner alignment that is key. Self-knowledge.
That is where the power to produce results comes from. And that is the chief
task of life, finding who we are, building a self.

Often with astrology readings, people’s
difficulties, and even illnesses, seem to me to come down to a disconnection
from who they are. That deep feeling you have when you are at ease with
yourself, when the voices that tell us we should be this or that, or that we’re
just a pile of crap, are quieter than usual -not entirely gone, that would be remarkable.

So for me an astrology reading is about
finding out who that person is, and what they are habitually doing that
conceals them from who they are. That’s part of it. It’s not just that we do
things that get in our own way. The deeper self also has to be built over years
and years by acting on that which is original to you, taking your gifts and
talents seriously (it took me years to take my interest in astrology seriously),
creating your own spring of knowledge and understanding. Not letting yourself
be drowned out by all the voices telling you what to think and how you should
be living. At the same time, that oppositional pressure, those demons, can be
exactly what are needed to push us to change.

So to be powerful in acting magically,
in manifesting, usually takes years. Which doesn’t mean some people aren’t
naturally gifted at it while being a mess with the rest of their lives! But it
involves a very different way of thinking to the usual Saturnian mode, cause
and effect as a product of personal will. There is a place for this, of course,
for everyday tasks. But even then, it needs to be in the service of Neptune.

Saturn can easily dominate Neptune, and
then everything goes wonky. Like trying to make an artist (Neptune) work 9 to 5
(Saturn).

For the bigger things, we need Neptunian
causality, to coin a phrase. To move house, for example, you need to dream it,
and don’t be afraid to dream what you really want. 2 plus 2 can’t equal 5, but
if you really need something, if it would help your life move forward - and
that is the key – it is surprising what can happen in ways you wouldn’t have
thought. Nature provides. Plants and animals are provided with what they need,
so why shouldn’t we be? We have different needs a lot of the time, but we are
part of nature, so nature will provide. That is what she does.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

great article l enjoyed it!

could it be that sometimes you don't know who you are or what you want because you are in a transition space..?we are living in a very saturnian world where you have to know all the time what you want and go and get it etc..there is not space for finding the true you

l wonder if you always have to know what you want, l belive there are fases in life when your wanting is on hold l experience this now, like when you feel your mars is inactive...or blocked

for me the solution to the inner conflict is stop fighting what i belive i should do/be and what i need so it can become one and manifest somehow

my progressed moon is in pisces just passing the DC and about to square natal neptune so that might explain it all but the real magic to me is giving in to it, going with the flow ;) and accept this coocooning fase for what it is.

Yes, I agree, not knowing is often an important part of the process, like when you're in the middle of a major transit. And that can be confusing for people, because we are 'meant' to be clear about what we want and what we're doing.

I have been watching with interest this 'money magnetizing' craze for a while and at first i was annoyed with it...shining gurus offering a way of thinking to create happy positive wealth...it just smacked too much of a fast food approach....then it got me thinking more..obviously a lot of people have jumped on board this bandwagon judging by the proliferation of info on the web about it, so that means a lot of people are trying out new ways of thinking about reality, which is a progression of sorts. I see it now as a bottom rung, a step on the ladder of magical thinking, for it seems preoccupied with monetary wealth, where i would suggest that more noble things tomanifest would be peace or healing and the like. however, a bottom rung, if persised with can lead to the next rung, and so on and so on...and i think in time, a lot of the monetary magnetizers will get bored with their cash and try to manifest some more 'real riches' we shall see....

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Barry Goddard

Astrology has its roots in ancient augury, in reading the intentions of the gods. It contains truth, but not in a literal, scientific way. It is a way of thinking, natural to human beings, that has been largely forgotten today. An astrology chart cannot be ‘read’ like any other text: rather, the astrologer uses the stars and planets in a ritual way that allows his or her intuition - the daemon, the gods, the unconscious - to speak. And the emphasis is not on foretelling the future but on how to live well, what attitude to take to life, how in other words to live in accord with the intentions of the gods. I mainly do readings by skype. If you’re interested, email me at bwgoddard1@aol.co.uk. I was born 12 Feb 1958, 18.50, London